The rude people we are turning into

Are we in this country turning into a rude society? Is education not having any effect on us, on the way we mould ourselves as citizens? Bus drivers and helpers assault students, who in turn go a step further and vandalise buses.

An additional deputy commissioner has an altercation with a retired civil surgeon and swiftly orders the latter's arrest. Young student activists insult teachers in public. The men behind shalish, or village arbitration, all too often mete out wild justice to people they call offenders, but that is anything but justice.

On the streets, hordes of motorbike riders commandeer the pavements with impunity and not a single policeman thinks of stopping them or penalizing them. As for the police, their behavior, always rough and rude toward citizens, has not changed. When VIP travelers are on the road, other people in their vehicles are roughly ordered to get out of the way. Now look elsewhere.

Traffic chaos has now become synonymous with our roads. Rickshaw pullers and CNG-driven scooter drivers compete with bus drivers to create as many problems as they can for people on the roads by steering their vehicles in ways that are plainly abhorrent.

And observe too the behavior of pedestrians. A good number of foot overbridges have come up in the nation's capital in the last few years and yet they remain empty for much of the time. The reason is the jaywalking that people resort to on the roads. Their bad old habits do not allow them the use of the overbridges, which is why they run across the roads, endangering not only their lives but that of others.When will all this change? When do we get back to civilized order?